The United Kingdom’s front line forces will benefit from an approximately $87.5 million five-year contract to BAE SYSTEMS building on a unique collaboration between the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and U.K. industry, the Minister for Defence Equipment and Support said.

The MoD and industry partnership, NITEworksr, creates simulated environments to test new ways of working and seeks out innovative and practical solutions to challenges armed forces face. It also allows MoD to test more efficient and effective ways of using existing equipment on current operations to examine the benefits of emerging technologies to make more informed decisions about future equipment and processes.

BAE is the lead partner of the NITEworksr partnership.

Industrial participation is achieved through full partnership: BAE, the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co. (EADS) Finmeccanica, General Dynamics [GD], LogicaCMG, MBDA, QinetiQ, Raytheon [RTN] and Thales–and through associate membership representing small and medium-sized companies and other U.K.-based subsidiaries of major U.S. prime contractors.

The new contract for NITEworksr aims to improve the tactics used by troops operating in theater, particularly in developing techniques to alleviate the threat of IEDs. NITEworksr has already improved the way intelligence is assessed and processed on operations and back in the United Kingdom.

The newly announced contract will continue the delivery of decision support services and interventions to the equipment acquisition community and to front line commands, the minister said.

NITEworksr is a trademark registered in the name of the U.K. Secretary of State for Defence.

“I welcome the continuation of the NITEworksr collaboration between MoD and the U.K. defence industry,” Baroness Taylor said Dec. 10. “NITEworksr has proven its worth repeatedly to the equipment acquisition community and front line commands. I am committed to exploiting simulation based capability. Through NITEworksr we will be able to continue to test, in a simulated environment, new equipment and processes ahead of key investment decisions. This enables us to take more informed decisions, deliver more effective capability to our armed forces and ensure value for money.”

The announcement underlines the government commitment to U.K. research and development capability as put forth in the Defence Industrial Strategy, she said.

The Defence Industrial Strategy cites NITEworks as “one of the key means of carrying Network Enabled Capability (NEC) from ideas to delivery.”

NITEworksr is a partnership between the MoD and industry drawing on a broad spectrum of U.K. defense capability and providing direct access to emerging technology.

Since 2003 NITEworksr has delivered more than $814 million in value to the MoD, deploying over 300 staff from across the ministry and industry together with a further 250 serving members of the armed forces.

Originally established in July 2003, the NITEworksr partnership is an innovative collaboration across the MoD and the U.K. defense community.

NITEworksr has overcome the traditional intellectual property constraints to create an innovative partnering model that brings together war-fighters, subject-matter experts and industry within an environment that stimulates new thinking in a spirit of openness and transparency.